


The Witching Hour

by KingdomFlameVIII



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), First Kiss, Fluff, Love Confessions, M/M, Pining, Podfic Available, Snake Crowley (Good Omens), Soft Aziraphale (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:22:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22630123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KingdomFlameVIII/pseuds/KingdomFlameVIII
Summary: "Nevertheless, Serpent of Eden, let it be known that you are loved, that you deserve to be loved, and that none so ever has there existed a being that has been loved by an angel so much as you."They stay up a little too late and Aziraphale decides to take a chance.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 35
Kudos: 387





	The Witching Hour

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in like six hours today because I saw a Tumblr post that pointed out that Ineffable Husbands is on its way to usurping Wincest in popularity on ao3 and I was like 'cheers, that's a cause I could write for.'
> 
> Listen, you've read this fic a hundred times, I've read this fic a hundred times, and we both know we want a hundred more. This is just my chip in the pile.

It's not entirely clear when exactly the witching hour takes place, however it is generally agreed upon that it falls sometime between midnight and dawn, during the darkest hours in which everything feels slightly out of place.

The witching hour is often known to spark strange and peculiar desires. The number of inventions conceived during this time is second only to those invented on the toilet. Such examples include: well, the toilet, as well as multi-level marketing, dry shampoo and, most notably, the Snapchat filter. 

It is at this time that the space in the world grows smaller. The vastness of it all shrinks away, compartmentalized for another time. The encroaching darkness provides the illusion of safety, a silence to be filled. Here in the dark, it's just you and me. Nothing is too dangerous, nothing too silly. No idea unsuitable to ponder. No harm ever came from pondering.

Under these conditions, humans tend to make decisions they would otherwise have the good sense not to make.

For all its queer effects, the witching hour does at least have the good manners to be a very nonsensical hour to be pursuing nonsensical whims, thus many approaching disasters may be quelled before they even begin.

In the case of two divine beings that require no sleep, however, opportunity for strange impulses are far more frequent.

The hour is 2:57am, which is just shy of prime time, and an angel and a demon are hidden away quite cosily in the back room of a book shop, and it is both quite possible and quite likely that neither of them are asleep.

It had been three weeks or so since the apocalypse that wasn’t, and Crowley had been around _a lot._ He swaggered his way into the book shop whenever he damn well felt like it, which apparently was _always._ He would drop by with a book he thought Azriphale might like, or strut in like a peacock declaring that he had just shut down digital inventory in something called an "Amazon shipping warehouse." Sometimes he would simply come in and declare that Aziraphale “needed to be aired out so that he wouldn’t rust,” and drag him out for a walk without so much as a by your leave. This will, of course, always lead to dinner and drinks, time slipping unnoticed between them until the witching hour finds them yet again. 

Any day now Aziraphale was half expecting him to miracle up a bed to skip the necessity of going home in the first place.

It was all very old and it was all very new and, in complete honesty, it was all a little exhilarating too.

Presently, Crowley _could_ be asleep. It's difficult to tell, as he's rather snake-shaped at the moment, which comes with an unnerving lack of eyelid. He's coiled thoroughly around Aziraphale’s body, tail twisted along his calf, body weaving up around his midsection, wrapping around one arm, and up over the shoulder until his head came to rest just below Aziraphale’s collarbone. 

Aziraphale is reading out loud to him. See them now, tucked into the corners of each other, lit gently by a lamp too dim and too far away for any human to read by. The lamp was an afterthought, a meager barrier of protection from the intimacy of the dark. _I would find you by touch alone. Let me map your bones, travel the planes of you. Carve me a spot to nestle inside of you._

They never touched like this while Crowley took human form. In fact, they rarely touched at all while Crowley was in human form. Switching appearances had probably been the most deliberate contact they had ever made with each other, and it was certainly the most electric. Hold it back. Push it down.

But Crowley doesn’t seem to think the rules to intimacy applied as a snake--and certainly not when the book shop was so cold--and Aziraphale wasn’t going to be the one to object to it. And if he kept the temperature down just enough to comfortably require a snake scarf, well, that was nobody's business but his own.

Aziraphale had been reading without reading for some time now, speaking the words he saw, but not hearing them. Hold it back. Push it down

There are a great many words to describe what Aziraphale is going through, and I will tell you some of them. To put it in the fewest words possible, Aziraphale is pining.

This is not new.

What it _is,_ is agonizing, particularly so in the aftermath of Armageddon. Because, technically he’s free to be with Crowley as often as he likes now that heaven isn’t watching too closely. What they are now (in this moment, literally) is the closest they’ve ever been, and Aziraphale finds himself caught between reckless elation and the pounding longing for something more, for something different.

And things _are_ different. The weight of eleven tense, terrified years is slowly waning, dissolving like the slow burn of an incense. Watch the smoky tendrils drift up and away, the ashy ghost of a stick clinging on for dear life. What do you do with an expired secret? How do you let go of a lifetime of glances over the shoulder? A lifetime of _quiet, they could be listening_ , a lifetime of _not here_ and _we aren't friends. We don't know each other._ Keep it close, careful, don't spill.

It is a dangerous thing to release a caged heart. Once touched by love, stained by the red of it, a thing cannot become untouched. It will splatter the walls, seep into the carpet. Wind it up, watch it dance. Watch a spintop weave its way about the room, a Tasmanian devil of a thing, getting its greasy hands on all your possessions. No use trying to clean up. The stain will be there, underneath. 

Once you give voice to love, you cannot take it back.

And make no mistake, what Aziraphale feels is love. It is divine, and it is human, and it's everything because it's Crowley.

_Do you remember the day that we met? I do. You were a demon, and you comforted me. And you've been comforting me ever since. How can it be, that with heaven's light behind me, it is only by you that I've ever felt loved?_

The idea is ludicrous. Demons are not known to possess the virtues _._ Aziraphale is not sure Crowley can even _feel_ love. Can he feel what Aziraphale feels? The desire to _know,_ to possess, to cherish? What kind of heart lies at the center of a demon? Could Aziraphale place a hand on him and feel a _thumpthumpthump_ to mirror his own thunder rapid heart? 

Aziraphale isn't sure if he’s ever sensed a whiff of love from Crowley. His aura had felt more or less the same as long as Aziraphale had known him. Curious, yes, too fond of humans for his own good? Yes. _Fondness,_ Crowley did much of. Love? It's impossible to say.

Often Aziraphale wonders why Crowley had fallen. He wonders how the Almighty could ever have gazed on a creature of such conviction, such passion and bravery and kindness, and judged him unworthy. Surely Aziraphale's actions as of late were much higher grounds for expulsion, and yet he still had wings. So what, excuse his language, the _fuck?_

He knows that Crowley is sensitive about the fall, and he knows now how poorly hell must have treated him and what they would have done to him had Aziraphale not been there instead. He would have _died_ there and he would have died not knowing that he was loved.

Aziraphales adoration for Crowley is staggering. His throat tightens. He is still reading. He knows this book well, the words come easily enough but later, when he comes to pick it up again, he will have hopelessly lost his place. 

He needs to know, Aziraphale decides, tossing caution to the wind. The witching hour is peaking. _Why not here? Why not now?_ Because honesty, full disclosure is easier in the end regardless but Crowley really, really deserves to be loved and he should absolutely know that. Now how do we pepper it into this conversation?

  
"Divine creature that lay upon my breast," Aziraphale begins carefully, speaking as though he were still reading from the text, holding the prose of it. "I know not whether you slumber or stir, nor do I know which I would prefer."

Crowley doesn't move, or show any indication whatsoever that he could hear him. Aziraphale realizes now that he's been stroking the scales on Crowley's back. He wonders if it's inappropriate, but he does not stop. As though the flow of his speech was directly linked to the movements of his hand, he could not have one without the other.

Steeling himself, Aziraphale pushes forward.

"Should you find yourself in depths too profound, too vast for the undertaking, do not be afraid. You needn't do a thing with my words but hear them."

"By the warmth of the sun and the beauty of the moon I walk eternal, in revelry of the Great design. Tis so, that the Almighty created countless wonders for us to behold, and I shall never see them all."

"My task, my simple, my unburdened, my glorious purpose, is to witness the Lord's creations, and to breathe love into them all. How lucky I am! How blessed, to be charged with the care of such a world."

"And yet, as the earth grows weary, as the colors begin to blur and my days stretch farther, I find I have erred from my path. My love, once so indiscriminate and all encompassing has given way to favor. The static warmth, the tranquil constancy with which I was born has surged and swollen, raged and ravaged and burst from the seams."

He pauses, his own boldness surprising him. He's saying too much, he's definitely saying too much, but he finds himself unable to stop, and the words keep spilling out.

"If life as I know it is love, then there does not exist a word for which I feel for you."

"I have no interest in the light should it not shine upon your face, nor the dark should you not lurk in its shadows. To have you by my side is to know peace, and to hear you laugh is to know joy."

"It is in the most divine paradox that a being of heaven, who is made only to love, to take so closely, so violently, to a being of hell, who cannot love, by nature. My dear, my companion, my love. I would cast aside my angelic grace, force it from my body should it mean your salvation, should it mean that you could feel as I feel, be saved as I am saved."

"Nevertheless, Serpent of Eden, let it be known that you _are_ loved, that you _deserve_ to be loved, and that none so ever has there existed a being that has _been_ loved by an angel so much as you."

A strange word sits upon Aziraphale's tongue, a word he has never heard before, and certainly never spoken before. A name. He decides to say it.

Crowley.

 _Crowley's_ name. His true name. It feels almost blasphemous to say. It feels naughty, but in the clever way it feels when Crowley tempts him into something he wants anyway, the private dance of _I shouldn't_ and _go on, nobody has to know._

See the angel now, his strawsilk hair yellowed by the lamp, cheeks burnished bright and pink, baffled by his own gall. 

“So… so there. I, given all that’s happened, I had to say so.”

Aziraphale sits still for about a minute.

And promptly turns back to his book-- which had fallen quite forgotten into his lap-- picks up where he assumes he’d left off. 

Crowley doesn't budge. In his reptilian form it’s difficult to tell if he’s even breathing, and Aziraphale certainly can’t pick out a heart beat over the cacophonous drumming of his own. He's certain Crowley can feel it too.

He reads calmly and deliberately until he comes down enough to conclude that Crowley is, in fact, sleeping and that he’d have to try something, er- far less drastic at a later date.

Some mixture of relief and regret cools his fire red veins like slush. Maybe it would be enough for now. Just to have said it, to have said _something._ To acknowledge it, even to himself. He feels a little pride. See? He can be brave too. 

He is thinking this with a small degree of satisfaction when Crowley stirs and finally begins to uncoil, and terror floods Aziraphale anew. Crowley slithers completely away from Aziraphale’s body, leaving cold spots where he was laying, and manifests on the couch beside him. 

He looks _wrecked._

His wide yellow irises have stretched to all corners of his eyes, his face going through many expressions in rapid fire.

“You- I mea- you can’t just- nope. Nope I can’t, I need a minute.”

He turns instantly back into a snake with a distinct crunching sound and lands back on the sofa with a small thud. Aziraphale wonders if it had been as painful as it sounded.

Aziraphale had imagined many scenarios in which he confessed to Crowley, and this did not happen in a single one of them. It was just as well, he supposes. Snakes couldn’t laugh, after all, or raise a racket. Was he trying to work out how to end it? Aziraphale couldn’t bear the thought.

It had just so happened that snakes also could not cry, although the thought of that wouldn’t occur to Aziraphale for quite some time.

For the first time since gaining his newfound freedom, Aziraphale has no idea what to do. He is not, strictly speaking, English but he's nearer English than heavenly by anyone's standards these days. So he does what he has been domesticated to do.

“I’m going to put the kettle on, alright? I’ll be right back,” he says gently, and stands up from the couch to all but bolt from the room.

There's a small kitchen in the flat above Aziraphale’s bookshop, and it's far enough away from Crowley that he feels he can make _some_ manner of noise without being overheard.

“Okay, er--” he grunts, searching around as he had momentarily forgotten where the tea was. He blows air of his mouth, “ah, yes.”

He digs out a teacup for himself and it instantly fills itself with wine. Then vodka, then hot cocoa, then tequila, then wine again, finally settling on something brown and strong. He knocks it back unthinkingly, and paces back and forth once or twice.

“Not to worry,” he tries to reassure himself.

He draws a chair while he waits for the kettle to boil. The light above him hums, casting a sickly greenish light over even more sickly greenish cabinets. It's warmer up here than it is in the shop, and Aziraphale finds himself fingering at his collar. He feels damp.

Aziraphale had been to a city once called Kagoshima. The humans had built it next to an active island volcano. It had erupted so fiercely that the magma swallowed down islands, stretched its fingers across the bay and connected to the mainland. 

The volcano erupts so often that the locals have adapted to falling debris. To the air choked by ash. Thousands of tiny explosions a year, and the humans go about their lives, weathering the bad, preparing for the worst. 

He doesn't know if he relates more to the humans or to the volcano.

Aziraphale fashions a mental catalogue of responses that he could possibly use in the different scenarios he's conjured. His teacup has filled again, with what he doesn't know, but he drinks it down without tasting it.

For one horrible moment, he wonders if he will come down only to find Crowley has left. 

When he eventually does make his way downstairs, Crowley is exactly where he’d left him. He lets out a silent sigh, and opts to give the demon some space, sits in the armchair instead of the sofa now. He places the tray on the table beside him and places his hands in his lap.

When Crowley manifests again, he stands to his feet, looking very much himself, black sunglasses and all. Aziraphale frowns slightly. The glasses disappoint him. This was the sort of conversation that demanded eye contact, he felt, and he it terribly unfair that Crowley could hide away while he himself was feeling so vulnerable.

“Um, yeah, okay so pretty much got all that,” Crowley says, gesturing heavily and moving about the room, “But there’s one thing, just a thing I don’t understand here, right.”

He stops for a second to drag his hand over his mouth. Aziraphale didn’t need to see his eyes to know that they were on him.

“What, in ssssssixxx thousand years could I _possibly_ have done,” he spat, “To make you think that I don’t love you?”

It is in this precise moment that the witching hour ends, leaving two bewildered fools now to bumble around and deal with the consequences of their actions. 

“Crowley? Will you take your glasses off please?”

Crowley tilts his head back defiantly and sways side to side but eventually he does what he's told. His irises are still expanded over the whites of his eyes. Aziraphale has only seen him like this a handful of times and most of them were in extremely bad traffic.

“Answer the question, angel.”

“Well- well of course you don’t!” Aziraphale blusters, once again unprepared for the turn this was taking. “I would be able to feel it. I do sense love, you know.”

“You know this is a lot to drop on a guy right?” Crowley says, moving about the room again, all arms and legs and wild gestures. “Pop in for a nice nap at the bookshop, with this whole crafty plan to sneak in a cuddle and hope you don’t notice, and then you go and say that and then you go and say _that--”_

“It’s really all right,” Aziraphale says, pleadingly, “You're right, I shouldn't have gotten carried away, and I'm sorry. But you can’t expect me to believe-- my dear, you feel the same to me as you always have. There’s nothing new here whatsoever.”

Crowley barks out a strained laugh.

“Yeah, no shit.” 

Aziraphale stops, reconsiders. He can’t feel it. Of course he couldn’t have felt it. By the time he had (privately) come to think of Crowley as a friend, Aziraphale had long accepted his aura as a fact of life. Stable, unchanging. It was a comfort to Aziraphale, a lighthouse in the ever swirling, ever evolving storm of humanity. 

Could it truly have been so long, that he could've missed something so significant because it had happened before he would’ve known to look for it?? _That would have had to have been, well it would have been millenia. Millenia._

Aziraphale’s expression softens into something between sadness and fondness. Crowley's captivated him now, his scepticism begins to bleed away. Aziraphale looks at him now, all limbs and angles and beauty, and he looks small. His fingers have disappeared into his too-small pockets and his brow is furrowed into a gentle scowl.

“Can you tell me when?”

“Yeah. So this one time I came up to you and you didn’t smite me the second you saw me--”

This takes Aziraphale aback greatley.

”Crowley?” he sputters, but Crowley pushes right past as if Aziraphale hadn’t said it.

“Which was a little weird to me, cause I kinda went up there to, you know, mission accomplished and all, but then I wasn’t smote- smited… smitten? I- no I mean- I _was_ smitten, but-”

“Crowley…”

“Instead of smiting me, you kept me dry in the rain. And you gave away your stupid, ineffable my arse flaming sword, and you _lied_ to god about it! Don't look at me like that, I _heard_ you. I thought 'where does that wanker get the nerve' so I stuck around to find out and…” He threw his hands up in the air and grinned despite himself, “It all sort of spiraled from there.”

Crowley wets his lips. 

"I need to clarify," Aziraphale says, quickly, nigh babbling _someone_ stop him, "Just, if it got lost in translation, I feel-- that is, this isn't something you need to-- I'm…"

This is harder to do with Crowley standing in front of him, alert and watching him with eyes that look to be too big for his face. He looks into the yellow honey drip of them and he sees patience, like liquid gold. He thinks of tornados, and volcanos. He sees his comfortable place in the universe shift, and threaten to shatter. A mirror cannot be fixed once it's broken. 

_Break it,_ he thinks.

"I love being your best friend and I'll take it happily if that's what you'll give me. But--"

Crowley crosses the room fluidly and kneels in front of Aziraphale's armchair. His arms come up, lying atop Aziraphale's wrists. He picks one up and brings it to his mouth.

"I've been in love with you," Crowley says, placing a kiss to the inside of Aziraphale's wrist. "For fucking _eras."_

"I loved you," he continues, "When I saw you translating for a mother and child at Babel." 

He kisses the tops of Aziraphale's knuckles.

"I loved you in Rome, when I caught you stealing books out of the Vatican."

He rises, kisses Aziraphale on the forehead.

"I loved you in 1350, when I found you on suspension for too many unapproved miracles."

He kisses Aziraphale's temple.

"I loved you in 1967 when you gave me the holy water that saved my life."

He kisses the corner of Aziraphale's mouth.

"I love you now," he says plainly.

At some point during all this, Aziraphale's eyes had fluttered shut. He opens them now, but he doesn't need to to know what's coming. 

And then Crowley is pushing into him, warm lips against lips as thin, wonderfully solid arms wrap around him tightly. Aziraphale places a hand down flat upon Crowley's chest, feeling the heat of it, chasing the _thumpthumpthump_ that matched his own with wild abandon. His lips part and Crowley surges.

He's pressed thoroughly between Crowley and the chair and one hand had come up to tangle in red rust hair. He drags Crowley's lower lip gently between his teeth as they part, pleased to hear his breath shudder. They kiss once more, sweetly, and then Crowley is drawing back.

He's laughing. A childish, giddy laugh, and oh, Aziraphale adores him. He presses their foreheads together and laughs with him.

“You taste like whiskey. Did you go in there and _drink?"_

"I may have," Aziraphale admits, giddily. "I really can't recall."

Crowley hugs him then. They've never hugged before, chest to soft chest and hands smoothed over backs and chins tucked into shoulders. It feels more intimate than kissing, somehow, feeling Crowley breathe against him, smelling the salt and the smoke of him. And _this,_ this is what home feels like. It feels like safety and rightness and comfort and love.

"Angel."

"Yes darling?"

"Read to me?"

This time, when they tangle together on the sofa, in the almost-dark at an ungodly hour in the morning, no serpent form is required.

  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
